As their bumph puts it, the Hoste Arms and Paul Whittome 'are made for each other - they've both struggled to avoid being popular country attractions'. The former has been a court house, the latter a pub bouncer; the former a brothel, the latter a politician. Now they are together and, with a few reservations, the union is to be celebrated.

Before opening up the Hoste, Whittome spent a couple of years travelling round Britain sampling its restaurants and pubs. It would have been tempting after all that work to have concluded that the project was too strenuous and looked round for something else to research. To his credit, Whittome took the gamble of opening a restaurant in Norfolk. The risk involving not the paucity of local produce, but the relative poverty of the local populace. There is an abundance of butchers in the area, but an abstinence of bon viveurs.

Sensibly he opted for Burnham Market which, when the Londoners churn up in their 4X4s, is as chi-chi as Norfolk gets. On the night we visited, there wasn't a spare seat to be had in the house.

We were waited upon by Frankie, who moved with all the lightness and deftness of Nicely Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls. The starters were excellent. Gronnie's tuna niçoise, containing everything you wanted and nothing you didn't, was perhaps the best she had tasted, and my mouselline was meltingly good. The bottle of Montagny Premier Cru to accompany it was both delicious and competitively priced. In between courses we shared six dozen oysters caught locally.

The high standards were sustained with the main courses. Gronnie's lamb was well-sourced and perfectly cooked to a tender pink; my pig's trotter punchy and satisfying and complemented by crisp sauté potatoes; the Argentinian red bullishly good.

The only blot was Gronnie's fondant potato block, which was an unwelcome throw-back to the 70s. Throughout, the service we received from Frankie and his cohorts was sublime.

All evening the front bar had been kept busy by the locals, many of whom have selected their favourite dishes from the menu for Whittome's book The Hoste - My Passionate Affair.

He appears to have pulled off the happy trick of appealing to just about everyone. As we finished our digestifs, Frankie appeared from nowhere to chauffeur his boss home.